“I can’t believe this. In a church? Holy shit.” Jackson pulls out his guitar.
“Told you.”
“You sure this is chill? You’re not gonna get in trouble, are you?”
“It’s good.” I smile. I’ve been counting the minutes. He will play his guitar to moaning, and I will sing lyrics that have nothing to do with Jesus, and we’ll bring the demo with us out to New York, where we’ve both been accepted at NYU. We will live in a city full of music, full of art and energy and little bars where we can make our own kind of famous. Me a softer, indie version of Katy Perry and he a modern James Dean.
And tonight—maybe, hopefully, oh god—will be the night that I finally give myself to him. If, of course, I have the guts to go through with it.
CHAPTER SIX
SO HOW DID A girl like me get involved with a boy like Jackson? A boy who’s not in my church? A boy who doesn’t even believe in God?
The truth? It was like magic.
I know everyone says that, but for me it was true. It was like he materialized out of thin air once all my questions about God turned into answers, like he was waiting for me all along.
We met last October, at a football game.
“Go, Warriors!
Go, Go,
Go, Warriors!
We’re num-ber one,
And we know it!”
I force the cheer out with the other girls, but my heart’s not in it. I’m sitting on Katie’s shoulders, holding up the left side of the banner. It reads If God is for us, who can be against us? — Romans 8:31. Homecoming is against a public school this year, Arvada High. This message is for them. Apparently, God takes sides in high school sports now.
My fellow cheerleaders seem to think so. But it feels like a taunt to me, a jeer, not a cheer. It’s mean spirited and unsportsmanlike, even though we pride ourselves on our morality.
I’ve been noticing a lot of that lately. Not just with the cheerleaders, but at school, at church. How, even in stuff like this, we create ways to make ourselves believe we’re better than everyone else. It’s different than holier than thou. It’s my house is bigger than your house, my car is better than your car, my God is better than your God. For winners to exist, there have to be losers, and we love having the losers around. We don’t actually care about saving souls, we want people beneath us, a crowd of them, the bigger the better, like a pretty girl who only wants ugly friends.
I’m ashamed to think I’ve been standing right alongside them for so long. Last year at this time, I was the one making the banners.
The boys barrel through, ripping it to pieces. The remnant left in my hand only says, If God, which seems like the whole question lately, not just a piece of it. If God loved me… If God is omnipotent… If God exists at all…
They’re private questions, not ones I can talk to anyone about. And honestly? They’re not even really questions anymore.
Katie launches me off her shoulders, and it’s time to scream and kick. Finally. This is the part I can do. I jump and race along the field, hands up, waving at the crowd, revving them up. It gets me going too. I feel better, glad to give my body over to the movement of it.
Then I see him, or feel him maybe, because I turn to the opposing side. And he’s looking at me, helmet in hand. Only me.
His gaze frightens me it’s so intense. Dark eyes like mirrors, reflecting the arena lights straight back toward me. I feel locked in his crosshairs, afraid to turn my back. I only realize I’m standing still when Katie yanks my elbow to get moving. Another cheer has already started. We race to the sidelines, late.
I don’t see him again until halftime, when he’s heading toward the locker rooms and I’m lined up just off the field for the homecoming court presentation, Mike on my arm in his football uniform.
“Good luck, gorgeous,” the boy says as he passes, a cocky grin plastered on his face.
I can’t help but grin back, even though Mike is standing right there. My face blossoms red.
“Excuse me?” Mike says.
But the boy just keeps walking.
“Jerk.” Mike says, then turns to me. “Don’t worry, he’s just trying to get in my head.”
I wasn’t worried.
On the field they announce I’m homecoming queen and Mike is king. Of course we are. I’m probably the only girl in the universe who wishes she wasn’t homecoming queen. It feels like a burden to smile and wave and pretend I’m surprised and demurely accept Mike’s cheek peck so the crowd can roar.
I resolve again to break up with him, maybe after his birthday next week. Or is it the week after? Either way, I’ll do it. I will.
The other cheerleaders and I do our halftime routine with the band. I swear, as I fly up and spin through the air, I think I catch his eye again. But when I land and turn around to look, I don’t see him anywhere.
It’s me, not him, who, after the game is over, finds a place near their bus to hang out. I check my phone, as if I’m there by accident. It’s forever I’m standing here. The girls are texting me, trying to find me, but I don’t text back. I have to see him again. I have to give him a chance to see me.
He doesn’t come. Other boys straggle on the bus, freshly showered and dressed in clean clothes. They’re sullen, licking their wounds from the loss, a good school but not as good as ours. I wish for them we hadn’t won. And maybe for me too. I wish they’d made our banner a joke.
The bus leaves without him, which I don’t understand. Whenever we travel, we have to go as a team on the bus. It doesn’t make sense. How did I miss him? Maybe he wasn’t real.
I make my way to the locker room to get my stuff. When I come back out, Katie and Angela and Erica and Paige are hanging out in the hallway.
“Emma!” Paige says. “There you are.”
“Hey.” I say.
“Where have you been? We’ve been texting you,” Katie asks. Her voice is irritated. I’ve forgotten I’m their ride to the after party.
“You have?” I pull out my phone. “Sorry, my ringer’s off. Ready to go?”
But before they can answer, my phone is snatched out of my hand.
“Hey!” I say.
He’s standing there, punching in numbers, his dark eyes twinkling, that same confident grin.
“Emma, I’m Jackson. Nice to meet you.” He hands my phone back to me, and walks away backward. “I’ll call you.” He turns and jogs out.
We’re all standing there, speechless.
What can I say? He’s a guy who knows what he wants.
“What was that about?” Katie asks, her eyebrows raised. She’d love to catch me doing something wrong. She’s always had a thing for Mike.
“I have no idea.” I say.
Paige catches my eye. She raises her eyebrows, a gentle warning. She’s the only one here who can read my face. I may be just as surprised as they are, but I liked that, and she knows it.
She didn’t like it. I’m her brother’s girlfriend. Despite our friendship, I need to watch myself.
I wipe my face clean of it, tuck away the moment for later.
“Was that the same jerk from before?” It’s Mike. I didn’t see him come out of the locker room. But here he is. He must have seen the whole thing.
“Who knows?” I say. “Just some random dude.” I tap my phone awake, roll my eyes. “I’m deleting his number right now.”
“You want me to talk to him?”
“No, that’s okay. Let’s just go to the party.”
We go to the party, all of us together, and we laugh and play board games and eat pizza and do everything we always do. But the entire time all I can think about is the number burning a secret light in the center of my phone. The number I most certainly did not delete.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THERE’S DANGER COMING THROUGH my voice. It’s wretched and lovely, my heart scraping down a chalkboard.
It’s for him. Just Jackson and no one else. His eyes lock on me through the glass. I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.
I keep going until the end. The last, long note of it is strangled from my throat like the dying embers from a campfire. When it’s over, I am empty, breathless. I gave all of myself to it, and there is nothing left.
“That. Was. Legit,” Jackson says, his voice piped into the sound booth from a mic on the control board. “Seriously. We have it. I’ve never heard you sound so good.”
“You think?” I say.
“Yeah. Let me run to the john then we’ll listen to it together.”
He’s grinning ear to ear as he takes off his headphones and darts into the hall.
I absentmindedly curl the mic cords back into place. I catch a glance at my reflection in the booth and run a brush through my hair. I slide a fresh coat of lip gloss over my lips and straighten my shirt. I breathe against my hand to check my breath and pop in a mint. Am I going to do this? Am I really going to do this?
By the time he comes back, I still don’t know.
“Ready to hear this sucker?” he asks.
“Like, so ready,” I say nervously.
He presses buttons, then plays the mix, coming into the booth to listen to it with me, where the sound can fully envelop us both. The strain of my voice against his guitar is lightning on skin, the branched brand it makes when it strikes flesh. We’ve made something together, something only the two of us could make.
He loops a finger through my jeans, tugs me close. He smells like cinnamon and soap, and all I want to do is inhale him. I run a hand up his chest as he kisses me. Jackson’s kiss is a challenge, a dare. So I kiss him back, hard, until I can breathe his air into my own lungs. I could disappear into that kiss.
He brushes my hair away from my ear. “I’m going to kiss you here,” he says. And he does.
Then he runs his thumb across my clavicle. “And here,” he says, as he leans down to kiss me in the soft dip at the base of my neck.
“And here.” He traces lower, between my breasts, and kisses me there too.
Then his hands are on me, everywhere. He isn’t fumbling and clumsy like Mike. He isn’t tentative and searching like Nicolas, not weak. This boy doesn’t care about respect. He’s in total control. He’s picking me up and setting me on a stool, and my legs are around him and my hands are on him too, searching, hungrier this time.
He can feel it, the difference in me. He catches my hands in his, looks me in the eye. “You’re not saying no,” he says.
“I’m not saying no.”
“You sure? Like, for real?”
I close my eyes, try to flush my mind of everything I’ve heard tonight, everything I’ve heard my whole life. “I’m sure.”
“You don’t have to. Not for me. Not if you don’t want to.”
“I know. I—“ But suddenly I’m tired of words. Instead of an explanation, I kiss him, hard enough to convince him, to convince myself, that I know what I want.
“Okay,” he says, his breath coming rough. “Okay.”
We fumble our clothes off, my T-shirt catching on my nose as I pull it over my head, probably making me look like I have a pig’s snout. Jackson doesn’t seem to notice. He reaches for the button on my jeans, unbuttons them fast, then pulls down until I’m standing in front of him in just my panties.
I turn away, embarrassed, but he grabs me close and lifts me against him. And then we’re on the ground, and my panties are off, and I’m closing my eyes, self-conscious and not used to not knowing what to do.
“Open your eyes, Em,” he says.
So I do. I open my eyes and look into his. It’s like staring off the edge of a cliff. If I jump, will I be able to fly? Or go crashing into the rocks?
I have to do it. I have to know which it will be.
And then he’s there. And it hurts a little at first. But his eyes are locked on my eyes, and the pain passes, and before I know it the heat of him burns up all my promises: the purity pledge I signed in the sixth grade, the promise ring Mike gave me on my birthday, the vow I made with the other kids in front of my father tonight, until there’s nothing left but white space and the sweet sigh of relief that escapes my lips.
I can fly.
CHAPTER EIGHT
WE’RE TANGLED ON THE floor together, an awkward mess of angles that somehow fits together just right. My face is nestled into his chest, covering the tattoo of a flock of swallows flying across his heart, wild and swirling and free. He’s never told me much about that tattoo, just that he got it after getting released from juvenile detention a couple years ago. It’s amazing how far he’s come since then, working hard enough to get accepted at NYU right along with me.
“Don’t go back down there tonight,” he says, toying with my hair as he talks. “Let’s go somewhere. Right now.”
“Where would we go?” I giggle.
“The mountains. We could stay there all weekend.”
“And what? Live off the land?”
“I know this guy with a cabin.”
“You’re serious?”
“Maybe. Come on, Em. There’s so much more out there than this place.”
“Jackson,” I say, my voice saying no even though I wish I could say yes. I really wish I could say yes.
“Come on,” he says, smiling. He flips me onto my back and presses my hands against the floor. “I could wrestle a bear for your dinner.”
I just laugh. “You’re completely insane.”
“Am I?” he says with a twinkle in his eye.
He lets go of my hands and goes for my stomach, tickling me until I can’t breathe and have to beg him for mercy. Then pulls me close again, my head back in that perfect spot on his chest.
“How are you?” he asks. “Are you okay? With all of this?”
I take a deep breath, letting it all soak in. Do I feel different now? Has anything really changed? There’s a smile in my heart as I realize the answer is both yes and no. No, nothing has really changed. I don’t feel guilty, don’t feel wrong, don’t feel devastated at the mistake I’ve made. Nothing as beautiful as that could be a mistake.
And yes, because everything is different. The whole world. It’s bigger than it was before. More beautiful.
“I’m…fantastic,” I say.
He laughs, the boom of it in his chest almost concealing the noise.
The noise.
What was that?
Then there’s another sound, and I see it too late. The audio recording light mounted on the ceiling, switched on, red and blaring, one here, and a matching one in the hall to ward off intruders who might inadvertently ruin a take. It’s not capturing anything, but it is a beacon of our presence. How did I not think of it?
That sound was a door. There’s someone here; I can feel it. I push Jackson away. He doesn’t understand it at first, thinks I’m teasing again, and pulls me closer to him.
“I heard something.”
He lets go, and we both leap up, scrambling for our clothes. My T-shirt is back over my head, and my jeans are on, and I’m out in the hall in a flash, looking to see who it was. Praying that no one saw me. Saw us. But they must have.
That sound. What was that sound?
But when I tear open the door to the studio, there’s no one there.
“Are you sure you heard something?” Jackson says, right behind me.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I thought so.”
He jogs down the hall, looking, but comes back to me shrugging his shoulders.
“I didn’t see anyone.”
“Are you sure?”
“I looked everywhere. All the doors are locked along the hall.”
“Okay,” I say, even though I feel anything but okay.
“You’re probably just nervous, babe. Your mind’s playing tricks on you.”
“Maybe,” I say. “But I should get back anyway. It’s nearly midnight. The service is about to start.”
“Okay. You go ahead. I’ll clean things up here.”
“You know how to get out, right?”
“Yeah, no prob
lem.”
I kiss him goodbye.
I race back toward the Youth Center, piling my hair into a bun to mask how messy it must be. There’s music blaring from the room, so loud I can hear it the minute I open the door to the stairwell.
As I run through the hall, I see a spirited game of basketball in the gym. And then another game of Red Rover going on in the Youth Center. Red Rover. Anywhere else it would be a game for kids. I’m not sorry I missed it.
The whole thing is a cacophony of bouncing balls and shouting teenagers and Christian rock anthems everywhere.
Paige catches me at the door as I enter.
“Where did you disappear to? I was starting to get worried.”
“I’ve been around,” I say, breathless.
Paige smirks. “By “around” do you mean off in a dark corner with my brother?”
“I—“
She puts up her hand. “Nevermind. I don’t actually want to know the answer to that question.”
“Fair enough,” I say, relieved to not have to lie to her. Paige still doesn’t know about Jackson. I don’t know how to tell her, but the conversation is unavoidable. I have to tell her about it, and I have to break up with Mike. Now.
It’s not the first time I’ve tried, but this time I’m going to have to stand my ground. And when I do, Paige will have to know why. I resolve to find Mike tonight, to talk to him as soon as the service is over.
“Oh hey, where’s your earring?” she asks.
I reach to my earlobes and feel a diamond on the right but nothing on the left side. Crap. It’s probably in the recording studio. Hopefully Jackson will spot it and take it with him when he goes.
Paige raises her eyebrows and grins. “Maybe you can get Mike to retrace your steps.”
“Paiger, we should talk. Want to get a coffee tomorrow or something?”
“Okay,” she says warily. “What’s going on?”
But then Pastor Pete cuts the music and the chaperones are shouting to the crowd that the midnight worship service is about to begin. The kids from the gym shuffle inside to take their seats.
“Later,” I say to Paige. “Tomorrow, when we can be alone.”
“Okay, whatever,” she looks concerned but doesn’t press it further.
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